When Everything Is Research

A friend asked me how my weekend was going on Saturday afternoon. I almost texted back, So much work.

Then I did a quick mental audit and changed my reply to: Pilates this morning and just finished a little nap, so definitely good.

I’ve been thinking about that exchange ever since, because I’m not sure either answer was exactly right. Or more accurately: They were both right.

My career revolves around things I love, and I don’t take that for granted. Twenty-two-year-old investment-banking-analyst Liz would 100% cry happy tears if I told her that one day, writing about fitness and health—and practicing sauna towel choreography on her perfect Bernese mountain dog in the park—would be her job.

Which means a Pilates class not only zings my abs, but is also grist for posts about pelvic floor health. A trip to the bathhouse is how I want to spend a Sunday and it’s a growing part of my beat. An experience becomes an idea becomes a post or a pitch or a story—or just a detail I file away, its relevance TBD. I’ve learned that the things I can’t stop thinking about usually lead somewhere good.

This is all awesome. It can also be disorienting. When so much of my life doubles as research, what exactly counts as being off the clock?

Last week I got a message from a reader who’s been in a corporate role for 16 years, but fitness is her entire personality on weekends. She thinks she’s ready to blow up her career and build a new one around well-being—the thing she can’t stop thinking about. So let me be careful here: the blurring I’m describing is what she’s hoping for. It’s worth hoping for. It’s also not free.

Here’s what my weekend actually looked like. You tell me what counts as work…

• Zoomed with two writer crushes turned friends, Bill Gifford (Hotwired, Outlive) and Leslie Schrock (Bumpin’, Fertility Rules), and got so lit up I spent the evening on my—dum, dum, dum—book proposal.

• Crafted text and designed graphics for the Built For Strength retreat I’m co-hosting. I’m trying to be less precious about overthinking how I share my appearances. (P.S. This event is coming up hot—August 28–30—if you want to join us.)

• Texted with some wonderful sauna-master friends about my towel-waving technique, then took their tips for a spin in my backyard at dusk.

• Showered at around 8:30 p.m. Air-dried my hair and…

• Walked to Double Windsor in Windsor Terrace to split a cheeseburger, fries, and the “grape gazpacho” with Matt. Fizzy water with lime for me, IPA for him.

• Slept in till 7 a.m. That’s not a flex. It’s just how I’m wired.

• Walked Willa in Prospect Park and pulled over into an empty clearing to practice some towel choreography on her. A guy walked by with his dogs and a raised eyebrow. Hi?

• Worked on revisions for forthcoming NYT and Vanity Fair pieces, plus guest posts for a couple of other Substacks. Hyped for all of it to land soon.

• Picked up sourdough croissants and a giant cinnamon roll at Winner in Park Slope for my family to share. (Get there early before the best stuff is sold out.)

• Took my second class at the new-ish Craft Pilates in my neighborhood. My abs still feel so alive today.

• My sheets were clean and crisp. I napped.

• Wasted Spent way too much time teaching myself to make a label graphic in Canva.

• Matt and the kids went to see the new Spider-Man movie. I stayed home and worked. I’ll stream it someday.

• Finally took an Everything Shower at 8 p.m. and finished with my favorite Herbivore body oil. (Postponing showers is a recurring weekend problem for me.)

• Attempted a late dinner at Mash Inn, the new bar in a former laundromat that just added food. Predictably, it was packed. So, night two at Double Windsor, with a—let me live!—non-alcoholic Bloody Mary with extra olives.

• Turned my attention to the newsletter you’re reading right now.

• Jogged to Life Time because they have the best platforms for deadlifts, followed by a contrast therapy pit stop at Bathhouse. I don’t mean to be dramatic, but I felt reborn.

• East Village with my family for an early dinner at The Smith, followed by The Odyssey. It made me want to write about Trojan horses and Zeus’s law of hospitality this morning. Too soon—I’m still metabolizing the film.

• Got home late for a Sunday (10 p.m.). Prepped the coffee, reviewed my calendar for the week, and read in bed.

So: not just so much work. A nap, pastries, aufguss in the backyard at dusk, three nights off from cooking dinner, and abs that still zing. I still can’t tell you which parts were the job.

How was your weekend? Tell me in the comments. And with that, let’s get into the news of the week…

Much love to the friends and family of actor Hayden Panettiere. I met her in early 2023 in Malibu at a Women’s Health cover shoot, where we talked about being sober. She was a sweet, bright soul.

• NY Mag asks: Is admitting you’re struggling social media’s last taboo? We’ll post the breakup once we’ve healed, the layoff once we’ve landed somewhere better, the crisis once it has become a growth story. But we’re terrible at revealing the messy middle, when we have no idea how the story ends. (My low-stakes version: sharing my awkward aufguss journey.)

• Before we outsource therapy to bots, do we know what makes human therapy work? This NYT opinion piece argues neuroscience holds some answers.

• The New Yorker published a beautiful feature about death doulas, and the powerful relationships they develop with the people they care for.

• A UK psilocybin trial published in Nature Medicine found a 50% treatment response at six weeks versus 3% on placebo—and showed the depression treatment could be delivered safely in a community NHS setting, not just a hospital.

• And an ultrasound procedure on the brain is showing intriguing early results for substance use disorder, reports Wired.

• Get it, girls. Jessica Alba’s trainer and Lifting With Liz guest Betina Gozo Shimonek will open a fitness studio called LiftHer in Dallas next month. Olivia Figueroa opens Figure in Nolita. Y7 founder Sarah Levy opens up about leaving her yoga brand after it was acquired. And Amanda Freeman’s Func Fitness opens soon on the UES.

• Speaking of trainers going out on their own, a former Barry’s instructor went public alleging that the brand’s new non-compete restricts how coaches can monetize their personal brands, followings, and star power—which Barry’s relies on to fill its classes. My jaw dropped hearing that an update with potentially massive consequences for instructors’ livelihoods arrived in a staff email—if that’s how it went down.

~HALFTIME~
New sneaker crush: the Puma Suede Classic, which is excellent with jeans and cut-offs, and works beautifully for…lifting! One design note: I wish they came with a gum sole option.

• Eli Lilly sues six companies for allegedly selling black-market retatrutide⁠—its much-hyped next-gen weight-loss drug that’s still in Phase 3 trials and isn’t FDA-approved.

• Oura files a patent for “pregnancy complication detection,” which would continuously track blood pressure and arterial stiffness to signal possible hypertension, preeclampsia, and gestational diabetes.

• The longevity clinic business is trying to write its own accreditation rules, which is good considering no one regulates it.

• Amanda Mull writes about the “optimization backlash” for Bloomberg Businessweek. Veneers and social media are just two of the villains in her telling.

• In a lightning-rod NYT essay, Molly Jong-Fast writes that she’s not ashamed of her facelift. She invokes the male gaze, but the piece is really about how women in media are judged on appearance, weight, and above all, age. I’ve lived in that public-facing world for more than two decades, and the pressure she describes is real.

• Amazon searches for hair growth products more than tripled year over year, peaking at 2.5 million last quarter. It may be fueled by GLP-1 side effects.

• The Cobble Hill Collective published a wellness guide to the neighborhood, and now I want a scalp massage.

• Alex Cooper’s Unwell Beverages—the electrolyte brand with hangover energy—is so unwell, it’s done. On the sober side, I just discovered the Zero Proof Nation Substack with a global map of mocktail bars and nonalcoholic spirits shops. I’m checking out Park Slope’s Dry Humor this week.

• A Virginia Woolf adaptation paired with freestyle aufguss? Could it be any more Liz-coded?! My friends at Culture of Bathe-ing write about Sauna Theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe, the UK’s biggest sauna, running through Aug 31, with musicians playing behind protective glass.

• Air France permanently closed the sauna in its Paris airport lounge because passengers were “doing things in there that they should not have.” The heck?! This is why we can’t have nice things.

• A French engineer who models nuclear safety wants to help astronauts sauna in space. The snag is that without gravity, steam doesn’t circulate normally, potentially leaving you sitting in a cloud of hot fog. The Finns call that steam löyly, a word rooted in breath, spirit, and soul. You can launch the heat. The soul is harder.

Thank you for reading! Tell me about your weekend in the comments. And if you want to keep BCS coming, a paid subscription makes this newsletter possible. ♥️